What you're cheering for

‘I only wish,’ the General added. ‘that when it happens I could take all the asses who’ll be waving flags and cheering and crowding the recruitment office — take ’em all by one collective arm, and say: “Now then, Jack, you know what you’re cheering for? You’re cheering at the prospect of having a soft-nosed bullet fired into your pelvis, shattering the bone and spreading it in splinters all through your intestines, and dying in agony two days later — or, if you’re really unlucky, surviving for a lifetime of pain, unable to walk, a burden to everyone, and a dam’ nuisance to the country that will pay you a pension you can’t live off. That, Jack,” I’d tell ’em, “is what you’re cheering for.” I’d probably be locked up.’


Mr American, p.520, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


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A bullet did that

      “Are you sick, farangi? Why do you look away? Does the sight of blood distress you?” I looked up to find the bodyguard leaning on his spear; Portly was off on a frolic of his own, seemingly. “Nay, surely not; you have seen your own blood run from a wound.” He pointed to the star-shaped scar on my hand. “A bullet did that.”
      “A clean wound is one thing soldier,” says I, and nodded towards the Ladies’ De-ballocking Circle. “That is another.”


Flashman on the March, pp.186-7, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Better qualified than most

I applied for the Board of Ordnance, for which I knew I was better qualified than most of its members, inasmuch as I knew which end of a gun the ball came out of.

Flashman at the Charge, p.13, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Board of Ordnance, Defence Materiel Organisation.